DICTIONARY. In its proper and most usual meaning a dictionary is a book containing a collection of the words of a language, dialect or subject, arranged alphabetically or in some other definite order, and with explanations in the Definition and history. same or some other language. When the words are few in number, being only a small part of those belonging to the subject, or when they are given without explanation, or some only are explained, or the explanations are partial, the work is called a vocabulary; and when there is merely a list of explanations of the technical words and expressions in some particular subject, a glossary. An alphabetical arrangement of the words of some book or author with references to the places where they occur is called an index (q.v.). When under each word the phrases containing it are added to the references, the work is called a concordance. Sometimes, however, these names are given to true dictionaries; thus the great Italian dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca, in six volumes folio, is called Vocabolario, and Ernesti’s dictionary to Cicero is called Index. When the words are arranged according to a definite system of classification under heads and subdivisions, according to their nature or their meaning, the book is usually called a classed vocabulary; but when sufficient explanations are given it is often accepted as a dictionary, like the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux, or the native dictionaries of Sanskrit, Manchu and many other languages.

Dictionaries were originally books of reference explaining the words of a language or of some part of it. As the names of things, as well as those of persons and places, are words, and often require explanation even more than other classes of words, they were necessarily included in dictionaries, and often to a very great extent. In time, books were devoted to them alone, and were limited to special subjects, and these have so multiplied, that dictionaries of things now rival in number and variety those of words or of languages, while they often far surpass them in bulk. There are dictionaries of biography and history, real and fictitious, general and special, relating to men of all countries, characters and professions; the English Dictionary of National Biography (see Biography) is a great instance of one form of these; dictionaries of bibliography, relating to all books, or to those of some particular kind or country; dictionaries of geography (sometimes called gazetteers) of the whole world, of particular countries, or of small districts, of towns and of villages, of castles, monasteries and other buildings. There are dictionaries of philosophy; of the Bible; of mathematics; of natural history, zoology, botany; of birds, trees, plants and flowers; of chemistry, geology and mineralogy; of architecture, painting and music; of medicine, surgery, anatomy, pathology and physiology; of diplomacy; of law, canon, civil, statutory and criminal; of political and social sciences; of agriculture, rural economy and gardening; of commerce, navigation, horsemanship and the military arts; of mechanics, machines and the manual arts. There are dictionaries of antiquities, of chronology, of dates, of genealogy, of heraldry, of diplomatics, of abbreviations, of useful receipts, of monograms, of adulterations and of very many other subjects. These works are separately referred to in the bibliographies attached to the articles on the separate subjects. And lastly, there are dictionaries of the arts and sciences, and their comprehensive offspring, encyclopaedias (q.v.), which include in themselves every branch of knowledge. Neither under the heading of dictionary nor under that of encyclopaedia do we propose to include a mention of every work of its class, but many of these will be referred to in the separate articles on the subjects to which they pertain. And in this article we confine ourselves to an account of those dictionaries which are primarily word-books. This is practically the most convenient distinction from the subject-book or encyclopaedia; though the two characters are often combined in one work. Thus the Century Dictionary has encyclopaedic features, while the present edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, restoring its earlier tradition but carrying out the idea more systematically, also embodies dictionary features.

Dictionarium is a word of low or modern Latinity;[1]dictio, from which it was formed, was used in medieval Latin to mean a word. Lexicon is a corresponding word of Greek origin, meaning a book of or for words — a dictionary. A glossary is properly a collection of unusual or foreign words requiring explanation. It is the name frequently given to English dictionaries of dialects, which the Germans usually call idioticon, and the Italians vocabolario. Wörterbuch, a book of words, was first used among the Germans, according to Grimm, by Kramer (1719), imitated from the Dutch woordenboek. From the Germans the Swedes and Danes adopted ordbok, ordbog. The Icelandic ordabôk, like the German, contains the genitive plural. The Slavonic nations use slovar, slovnik, and the southern Slavs ryetshnik, from slovo, ryetsh, a word, formed, like dictionary and lexicon, without composition. Many other names have been given to dictionaries, as thesaurus, Sprachschatz, cornucopia, gazophylacium, comprehensorium, catholicon, to indicate their completeness; manipulus predicantium, promptorium puerorum, liber memorialis, hortus vocabulorum, ionia (a violet bed), alveary (a beehive), kamoos (the sea), haft kulzum (the seven seas), tszetien (a standard of character), onomasticon, nomenclator, bibliotheca, elucidario, Mundart-sammlung, clavis, scala, pharetra,[2]LaCrusca from the great Italian dictionary, and Calepino (in Spanish and Italian) from the Latin dictionary of Calepinus.

The tendency of great dictionaries is to unite in themselves all the peculiar features of special dictionaries. A large dictionary is most useful when a word is to be thoroughly studied, or when there is difficulty in making out the meaning of a word or phrase. Special dictionaries are more useful for special purposes; for instance, synonyms are best studied in a dictionary of synonyms. And small dictionaries are more convenient for frequent use, as in translating from an unfamiliar language, for words may be found more quickly, and they present the words and their meanings in a concentrated and compact form, instead of being scattered over a large space, and separated by other matter. Dictionaries of several languages, called polyglots, are of different kinds. Some are polyglot in the vocabulary, but not in the explanation, like Johnson’s dictionary of Persian and Arabic explained in English; some in the interpretation, but not in the vocabulary or explanation, like Calepini octoglotton, a Latin dictionary of Latin, with the meanings in seven languages. Many great dictionaries are now polyglot in this sense. Some are polyglot in the vocabulary and interpretation, but are explained in one language, like Jal’s Glossaire nautique, a glossary of sea terms in many languages, giving the equivalents of each word in the other languages, but the explanation in French. Pauthier’s Annamese Dictionary is polyglot in a peculiar way. It gives the Chinese characters with their pronunciation in Chinese and Annamese. Special dictionaries are of many kinds. There are technical dictionaries of etymology, foreign words, dialects, secret languages, slang, neology, barbarous words, faults of expression, choice words, prosody, pronunciation, spelling, orators, poets, law, music, proper names, particular authors, nouns, verbs, participles, particles, double forms, difficulties and many others. Fick’s dictionary (Göttingen, 1868, 8vo; 1874-1876, 8vo, 4 vols.) is a remarkable attempt to ascertain the common language of the Indo-European nations before each of their great separations. In the second edition of his Etymologische Forschungen (Lemgo and Detmoldt, 1859-1873, 8vo, 7217 pages) Pott gives a comparative lexicon of Indo-European roots, 2226 in number, occupying 5140 pages.

At no time was progress in the making of general dictionaries so rapid as during the second half of the 19th century. It is to be seen in three things: in the perfecting of the theory of what a general dictionary should be; in the elaboration Methods. of methods of collecting and editing lexicographic materials; and in the magnitude and improved quality of the work which has been accomplished or planned. Each of these can best be illustrated from English lexicography, in which the process of development has in all directions been carried farthest. The advance that has been made in theory began with a radical change of opinion with regard to the chief end of the general dictionary of a language. The older view of the matter was that the lexicographer should furnish a standard of usage — should register only those words which are, or at some period of the language have been, “good” from a literary point of view, with their “proper” senses and uses, or should at least furnish the means of determining what these are. In other words, his chief duty was conceived to be to sift and refine, to decide authoritatively questions with regard to good usage, and thus to fix the language as completely as might be possible within the limits determined by the literary taste of his time. Thus the Accademia della Crusca, founded near the close of the 16th century, was established for the purpose of purifying in this way the Italian tongue, and in 1612 the Vocabolario degli Accademici dellaCrusca, long the standard of that language, was published. The Académie Française, the first edition of whose dictionary appeared in 1694, had a similar origin. In England the idea of constructing a dictionary upon this principle arose during the second quarter of the 18th century. It was imagined by men of letters — among them Alexander Pope — that the English language had then attained such perfection that further improvement was hardly possible, and it was feared that if it were not fixed by lexicographic authority deterioration would soon begin. Since there was no English “Academy,” it was necessary that the task should fall to some one whose judgment would command respect, and the man who undertook it was Samuel Johnson. His dictionary, the first edition of which, in two folio volumes, appeared in 1755, was in many respects admirable, but it was inadequate even as a standard of the then existing literary usage. Johnson himself did not long entertain the belief that the natural development of a language can be arrested in that or in any other way. His work was, however, generally accepted as a final authority, and the ideas upon which it was founded dominated English lexicography for more than a century. The first effective protest in England against the supremacy of this literary view was made by Dean (later Archbishop) Trench, in a paper on “Some Deficiencies in Existing English Dictionaries” read before the Philological Society in 1857. “A dictionary,” he said, “according to that idea of it which seems to me alone capable of being logically maintained, is an inventory of the language; much more, but this primarily.... It is no task of the maker of it to select the good words of the language.... The business which he has undertaken is to collect and arrange all words, whether good or bad, whether they commend themselves to his judgment or otherwise.... He is an historian of [the language], not a critic.” That is, for the literary view of the chief end of the general dictionary should be substituted the philological or scientific. In Germany this substitution had already been effected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their dictionary of the German language, the first volume of which appeared in 1854. In brief, then, the modern view is that the general dictionary of a language should be a record of all the words — current or obsolete — of that language, with all their meanings and uses, but should not attempt to be, except secondarily or indirectly, a guide to “good” usage. A “standard” dictionary has, in fact, been recognized to be an impossibility, if not an absurdity.

This theoretical requirement must, of course, be modified considerably in practice. The date at which a modern language is to be regarded by the lexicographer as “beginning” must, as a rule, be somewhat arbitrarily chosen; while considerable portions of its earlier vocabulary cannot be recovered because of the incompleteness of the literary record. Moreover, not even the most complete dictionary can include all the words which the records — earlier and later — actually contain. Many words, that is to say, which are found in the literature of a language cannot be regarded as, for lexicographic purposes, belonging to that language; while many more may or may not be held to belong to it, according to the judgment — almost the whim — of the individual lexicographer. This is especially true of the English tongue. “That vast aggregate of words and phrases which constitutes the vocabulary of English-speaking men presents, to the mind that endeavours to grasp it as a definite whole, the aspect of one of those nebulous masses familiar to the astronomer, in which a clear and unmistakable nucleus shades off on all sides, through zones of decreasing brightness, to a dim marginal film that seems to end nowhere, but to lose itself imperceptibly in the surrounding darkness” (Dr J. A. H. Murray, OxfordDict. General Explanations, p. xvii). This “marginal film” of words with more or less doubtful claims to recognition includes thousands of the terms of the natural sciences (the New-Latin classificatory names of zoology and botany, names of chemical compounds and of minerals, and the like); half-naturalized foreign words; dialectal words; slang terms; trade names (many of which have passed or are passing into common use); proper names and many more. Many of these even the most complete dictionary should exclude; others it should include; but where the line shall be drawn will always remain a vexed question.

Another important principle upon which Trench insisted, and which also expresses a requirement of modern scientific philology, is that the dictionary shall be not merely a record, but also an historical record of words and their uses. From the literary point of view the most important thing is present usage. To that alone the idea of a “standard” has any application. Dictionaries of the older type, therefore, usually make the common, or “proper” or “root” meaning of a word the starting point of its definition, and arrange its other senses in a logical or accidental order commonly ignoring the historical order in which the various meanings arose. Still less do they attempt to give data from which the vocabulary of the language at any previous period may be determined. The philologist, however, for whom the growth, or progressive alteration, of a language is a fact of central importance, regards no record of a language as complete which does not exhibit this growth in its successive stages. He desires to know when and where each word, and each form and sense of it, are first found in the language; if the word or sense is obsolete, when it died; and any other fact that throws light upon its history. He requires, accordingly, of the lexicographer that, having ascertained these data, he shall make them the foundation of his exposition — in particular, of the division and arrangement of his definitions, that sense being placed first which appeared first in order of time. In other words, each article in the dictionary should furnish an orderly biography of the word of which it treats, each word and sense being so dated that the exact time of its appearance and the duration of its use may as nearly as possible be determined. This, in principle, is the method of the new lexicography. In practice it is subject to limitations similar to those of the vocabulary mentioned above. Incompleteness of the early record is here an even greater obstacle; and there are many words whose history is, for one reason or another, so unimportant that to treat it elaborately would be a waste of labour and space.

The adoption of the historical principle involves a further noteworthy modification of older methods, namely, an important extension of the use of quotations. To Dr Johnson belongs the credit of showing how useful, when properly chosen, they may be, not only in corroborating the lexicographer’s statements, but also in revealing special shades of meaning or variations of use which his definitions cannot well express. No part of Johnson’s work is more valuable than this. This idea was more fully developed and applied by Dr Charles Richardson, whose New Dictionaryof the English Language ... Illustrated by Quotations from theBest Authors (1835-1836) still remains a most valuable collection of literary illustrations. Lexicographers, however, have, with few exceptions, until a recent date, employed quotations chiefly for the ends just mentioned — as instances of use or as illustrations of correct usage — with scarcely any recognition of their value as historical evidence; and they have taken them almost exclusively from the works of the “best” authors. But since all the data upon which conclusions with regard to the history of a word can be based must be collected from the literature of the language, it is evident that, in so far as the lexicographer is required to furnish evidence for an historical inference, a quotation is the best form in which he can give it. In fact, extracts, properly selected and grouped, are generally sufficient to show the entire meaning and biography of a word without the aid of elaborate definitions. The latter simply save the reader the trouble of drawing the proper conclusions for himself. A further rule of the new lexicography, accordingly, is that quotations should be used, primarily, as historical evidence, and that the history of words and meanings should be exhibited by means of them. The earliest instance of use that can be found, and (if the word or sense is obsolete) the latest, are as a rule to be given; while in the case of an important word or sense, instances taken from successive periods of its currency also should be cited. Moreover, a quotation which contains an important bit of historical evidence must be used, whether its source is “good,” from the literary point of view, or not — whether it is a classic of the language or from a daily newspaper; though where choice is possible, preference should, of course, be given to quotations extracted from the works of the best writers. This rule does not do away with the illustrative use of quotations, which is still recognized as highly important, but it subordinates it to their historical use. It is necessary to add that it implies that the extracts must be given exactly, and in the original spelling and capitalization, accurately dated, and furnished with a precise reference to author, book, volume, page and edition; for insistence upon these requirements — which are obviously important, whatever the use of the quotation may be — is one of the most noteworthy of modern innovations. Johnson usually gave simply the author’s name, and often quoted from memory and inaccurately; and many of his successors to this day have followed — altogether or to some extent — his example.

The chief difficulty in the way of this use of quotations — after the difficulty of collection — is that of finding space for them in a dictionary of reasonable size. Preference must be given to those which are essential, the number of those which are cited merely on methodical grounds being made as small as possible. It is hardly necessary to add that the negative evidence furnished by quotations is generally of little value; one can seldom, that is, be certain that the lexicographer has actually found the earliest or the latest use, or that the word or sense has not been current during some intermediate period from which he has no quotations.

Lastly, a much more important place in the scheme of the ideal dictionary is now assigned to the etymology of words. This may be attributed, in part, to the recent rapid development of etymology as a science, and to the greater abundance of trustworthy data; but it is chiefly due to the fact that from the historical point of view the connexion between that section of the biography of a word which lies within the language — subsequent, that is, to the time when the language may, for lexicographical purposes, be assumed to have begun, or to the time when the word was adopted or invented — and its antecedent history has become more vital and interesting. Etymology, in other words, is essentially the history of the form of a word up to the time when it became a part of the language, and is, in a measure, an extension of the history of the development of the word in the language. Moreover, it is the only means by which the exact relations of allied words can be ascertained, and the separation of words of the same form but of diverse origin (homonyms) can be effected, and is thus, for the dictionary, the foundation of all family history and correct genealogy. In fact, the attention that has been paid to these two points in the best recent lexicography is one of its distinguishing and most important characteristics. Related to the etymology of words are the changes in their form which may have occurred while they have been in use as parts of the language — modifications of their pronunciation, corruptions by popular etymology or false associations, and the like. The facts with regard to these things which the wide research necessitated by the historical method furnishes abundantly to the modern lexicographer are often among the most novel and interesting of his acquisitions.

It should be added that even approximate conformity to the theoretical requirements of modern lexicography as above outlined is possible only under conditions similar to those under which the Oxford New English Dictionary was undertaken (see below). The labour demanded is too vast, and the necessary bulk of the dictionary too great. When, however, a language is recorded in one such dictionary, those of smaller size and more modest pretensions can rest upon it as an authority and conform to it as a model so far as their special limitations permit.

The ideal thus developed is primarily that of the general dictionary of the purely philological type, but it applies also to the encyclopaedic dictionary. In so far as the latter is strictly lexicographic — deals with words as words, and not with the things they denote — it should be made after the model of the former, and is defective to the extent in which it deviates from it. The addition of encyclopaedic matter to the philological in no way affects the general principles involved. It may, however, for practical reasons, modify their application in various ways. For example, the number of obsolete and dialectal words included may be much diminished and the number of scientific terms (for instance, new Latin botanical and zoological names) be increased; and the relative amount of space devoted to etymologies and quotations may be lessened. In general, since books of this kind are designed to serve more or less as works of general reference, the making of them must be governed by considerations of practical utility which the compilers of a purely philological dictionary are not obliged to regard. The encyclopaedic type itself, although it has often been criticized as hybrid — as a mixture of two things which should be kept distinct — is entirely defensible. Between the dictionary and the encyclopaedia the dividing line cannot sharply be drawn. There are words the meaning of which cannot be explained fully without some description of things, and, on the other hand, the description of things and processes often involves the definition of names. To the combination of the two objection cannot justly be made, so long as it is effected in a way — with a selection of material — that leaves the dictionary essentially a dictionary and not an encyclopaedia. Moreover, the large vocabulary of the general dictionary makes it possible to present certain kinds of encyclopaedic matter with a degree of fulness and a convenience of arrangement which are possible in no single work of any other class. In fact, it may be said that if the encyclopaedic dictionary did not exist it would have to be invented; that its justification is its indispensableness. Not the least of its advantages is that it makes legitimate the use of diagrams and pictorial illustrations, which, if properly selected and executed, are often valuable aids to definition.

On its practical side the advance in lexicography has consisted in the elaboration of methods long in use rather than in the invention of new ones. The only way to collect the data upon which the vocabulary, the definitions and the history are to be based is, of course, to search for them in the written monuments of the language, as all lexicographers who have not merely borrowed from their predecessors have done. But the wider scope and special aims of the new lexicography demand that the investigation shall be vastly more comprehensive, systematic and precise. It is necessary, in brief, that, as far as may be possible, the literature (of all kinds) of every period of the language shall be examined systematically, in order that all the words, and senses and forms of words, which have existed during any period may be found, and that enough excerpts (carefully verified, credited and dated) to cover all the essential facts shall be made. The books, pamphlets, journals, newspapers, and so on which must thus be searched will be numbered by thousands, and the quotations selected may (as in the case of the Oxford New English Dictionary) be counted by millions. This task is beyond the powers of any one man, even though he be a Johnson, or a Littré or a Grimm, and it is now assigned to a corps of readers whose number is limited only by the ability of the editor to obtain such assistance. The modern method of editing the material thus accumulated — the actual work of compilation — also is characterized by the application of the principle of the division of labour. Johnson boasted that his dictionary was written with but little assistance from the learned, and the same was in large measure true of that of Littré. Such attempts on the part of one man to write practically the whole of a general dictionary are no longer possible, not merely because of the vast labour and philological research necessitated by modern aims, but more especially because the immense development of the vocabulary of the special sciences renders indispensable the assistance, in the work of definition, of persons who are expert in those sciences. The tendency, accordingly, has been to enlarge greatly the editorial staff of the dictionary, scores of sub-editors and contributors being now employed where a dozen or fewer were formerly deemed sufficient. In other words, the making of a “complete” dictionary has become a co-operative enterprise, to the success of which workers in all the fields of literature and science contribute.

The most complete exemplification of these principles and methods is the Oxford New English Dictionary, on historicalprinciples, founded mainly on materials collected by the PhilologicalSociety. This monumental work originated in the suggestion of Trench that an attempt should be made, under the direction of the Philological Society, to complete the vocabulary of existing dictionaries and to supply the historical information which they lacked. The suggestion was adopted, considerable material was collected, and Mr Herbert Coleridge was appointed general editor. He died in 1861, and was succeeded by Dr F. J. Furnivall. Little, however, was done, beyond the collection of quotations — about 2,000,000 of which were gathered — until in 1878 the expense of printing and publishing the proposed dictionary was assumed by the Delegates of the University Press, and the editorship was entrusted to Dr (afterwards Sir) J. A. H. Murray. As the historical point of beginning, the middle of the 12th century was selected, all words that were obsolete at that date being excluded, though the history of words that were current both before and after that date is given in its entirety; and it was decided that the search for quotations — which, according to the original design, was to cover the entire literature down to the beginning of the 16th century and as much of the subsequent literature (especially the works of the more important writers and works on special subjects) as might be possible — should be made more thorough. More than 800 readers, in all parts of the world, offered their aid; and when the preface to the first volume appeared in 1888, the editor was able to announce that the readers had increased to 1300, and that 3,500,000 of quotations, taken from the writings of more than 5000 authors, had already been amassed. The whole work was planned to be completed in ten large volumes, each issued first in smaller parts. The first part was issued in 1884, and by the beginning of 1910 the first part of the letter S had been reached.

The historical method of exposition, particularly by quotations, is applied in the New English Dictionary, if not in all cases with entire success, yet, on the whole, with a regularity and a precision which leave little to be desired. A minor fault is that excerpts from second or third rate authors have occasionally been used where better ones from writers of the first class either must have been at hand or could have been found. As was said above, the literary quality of the question is highly important even in historical lexicography, and should not be neglected unnecessarily. Other special features of the book are the completeness with which variations of pronunciation and orthography (with dates) are given; the fulness and scientific excellence of the etymologies, which abound in new information and corrections of old errors; the phonetic precision with which the present (British) pronunciation is indicated; and the elaborate subdivision of meanings. The definitions as a whole are marked by a high degree of accuracy, though in a certain number of cases (not explicable by the date of the volumes) the lists of meanings are not so good as one would expect, as compared (say) with the Century Dictionary. Work of such magnitude and quality is possible, practically, only when the editor of the dictionary can command not merely the aid of a very large number of scholars and men of science, but their gratuitous aid. In this the New EnglishDictionary has been singularly fortunate. The conditions under which it originated, and its aim, have interested scholars everywhere, and led them to contribute to the perfecting of it their knowledge and time. The long list of names of such helpers in Sir J. A. H. Murray’s preface is in curious contrast with their absence from Dr Johnson’s and the few which are given in that of Littré. The editor’s principal assistants were Dr Henry Bradley and Dr W. A. Craigie. Of the dictionary as a whole it may be said that it is one of the greatest achievements, whether in literature or science, of modern English scholarship and research.

The New English Dictionary furnishes for the first time data from which the extent of the English word-store at any given period, and the direction and rapidity of its growth, can fairly be estimated. For this purpose the materials furnished by the older dictionaries are quite insufficient, on account of their incompleteness and unhistorical character. For example 100 pages of the New English Dictionary (from the letter H) contain 1002 words, of which, as the dated quotations show, 585 were current in 1750 (though some, of course, were very rare, some dialectal, and so on), 191 were obsolete at that date, and 226 have since come into use. But of the more than 700 words — current or obsolete — which Johnson might thus have recorded, he actually did record only about 300. Later dictionaries give more of them, but they in no way show their status at the date in question. It is worth noting that the figures given seem to indicate that not very many more words have been added to the vocabulary of the language during the past 150 years than had been lost by 1750. The pages selected, however, contain comparatively few recent scientific terms. A broader comparison would probably show that the gain has been more than twice as great as the loss.

In the Deutsches Wörterbuch of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm the scientific spirit, as was said above, first found expression in general lexicography. The desirability of a complete inventory and investigation of German words was recognized by Leibnitz and by various 18th-century scholars, but the plan and methods of the Grimms were the direct product of the then new scientific philology. Their design, in brief, was to give an exhaustive account of the words of the literary language (New High German) from about the end of the 15th century, including their earlier etymological and later history, with references to important dialectal words and forms; and to illustrate their use and history abundantly by quotations. The first volume appeared in 1854. Jacob Grimm (died 1863) edited the first, second (with his brother, who died in 1859), third and a part of the fourth volumes; the others have been edited by various distinguished scholars. The scope and methods of this dictionary have been broadened somewhat as the work has advanced. In general it may be said that it differs from the New English Dictionary chiefly in its omission of pronunciations and other pedagogic matter; its irregular treatment of dates; its much less systematic and less lucid statement of etymologies; its less systematic and less fruitful use of quotations; and its less convenient and less intelligible arrangement of material and typography.

These general principles lie also at the foundation of the scholarly Dictionnaire de la langue française of E. Littré, though they are there carried out less systematically and less completely. In the arrangement of the definitions the first place is given to the most primitive meaning of the word instead of to the most common one, as in the dictionary of the Academy; but the other meanings follow in an order that is often logical rather than historical. Quotations also are frequently used merely as literary illustrations, or are entirely omitted; in the special paragraphs on the history of words before the 16th century, however, they are put to a strictly historical use. This dictionary — perhaps the greatest ever compiled by one man — was published 1863-1872. (Supplement, 1878.)

The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, prepared under the auspices of the German Academies of Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig, Munich and Vienna, is a notable application of the principles and practical co-operative method of modern lexicography to the classical tongues. The plan of the work is to collect quotations which shall register, with its full context, every word (except the most familiar particles) in the text of each Latin author down to the middle of the 2nd century a.d., and to extract all important passages from all writers of the following centuries down to the 7th; and upon these materials to found a complete historical dictionary of the Latin language. The work of collecting quotations was begun in 1894, and the first part of the first volume has been published.

In the making of all these great dictionaries (except, of course, the last) the needs of the general public as well as those of scholars have been kept in view. But the type to which the general dictionary designed for popular use has tended more and more to conform is the encyclopaedic. This combination of lexicon and encyclopaedia is exhibited in an extreme — and theoretically objectionable — form in the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXesiècle of Pierre Larousse. Besides common words and their definitions, it contains a great many proper names, with a correspondingly large number of biographical, geographical, historical and other articles, the connexion of which with the strictly lexicographical part is purely mechanical. Its utility, which — notwithstanding its many defects — is very great, makes it, however, a model in many respects. Fifteen volumes were published (1866-1876), and supplements were brought out later (1878-1890). The Nouveau Larousse illustré started publication in 1901, and was completed in 1904 (7 vols.). This is not an abridgment or a fresh edition of the Grand Dictionnaire of Pierre Larousse, but a new and distinct publication.

The most notable work of this class, in English, is the CenturyDictionary, an American product, edited by Professor W. D. Whitney, and published 1889-1891 in six volumes, containing 7046 pages (large quarto). It conforms to the philological mode in giving with great fulness the older as well as the present vocabulary of the language, and in the completeness of its etymologies; but it does not attempt to give the full history of every word within the language. Among its other more noteworthy characteristics are the inclusion of a great number of modern scientific and technical words, and the abundance of its quotations. The quotations are for the most part provided with references, but they are not dated. Even when compared with the much larger New English Dictionary, the Century’s great merit is the excellent enumeration of meanings, and the accuracy of its explanations; in this respect it is often better and fuller than the New English. In the application of the encyclopaedic method this dictionary is conservative, excluding, with a few exceptions, proper names, and restricting, for the most part, the encyclopaedic matter to descriptive and other details which may legitimately be added to the definitions. Its pictorial illustrations are very numerous and well executed. In the manner of its compilation it is a good example of modern cooperative dictionary-making, being the joint product of a large number of specialists. Next to the New English Dictionary it is the most complete and scholarly of English lexicons.

Bibliography. — The following list of dictionaries (from the 9th edition of this work, with occasional corrections) is given for its historical interest, but in recent years dictionary-making has been so abundant that no attempt is made to be completely inclusive of later works; the various articles on languages may be consulted for these. The list is arranged geographically by families of languages, or by regions. In each group the order, when not alphabetical, is usually from north to south, extinct languages generally coming first, and dialects being placed under their language. Dictionaries forming parts of other works, such as travels, histories, transactions, periodicals, reading-books, &c., are generally excluded. The system here adopted was chosen as on the whole the one best calculated to keep together dictionaries naturally associated. The languages to be considered are too many for an alphabetical arrangement, which ignores all relations both natural and geographical, and too few to require a strict classification by affinities, by which the European languages, which for many reasons should be kept together, would be dispersed. Under either system, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, whose dictionaries are so closely connected, would be widely separated. A wholly geographical arrangement would be inconvenient, especially in Europe. Any system, however, which attempts to arrange in a consecutive series the great network of languages by which the whole world is enclosed, must be open to some objections; and the arrangement adopted in this list has produced some anomalies and dispersions which might cause inconvenience if not pointed out. The old Italic languages are placed under Latin, all dialects of France under French (but Provençal as a distinct language), and Wallachian among Romanic languages. Low German and its dialects are not separated from High German. Basque is placed after Celtic; Albanian, Gipsy and Turkish at the end of Europe, the last being thus separated from its dialects and congeners in Northern and Central Asia, among which are placed the Kazan dialect of Tatar, Samoyed and Ostiak. Accadian is placed after Assyrian among the Semitic languages, and Maltese as a dialect of Arabic; while the Ethiopic is among African languages as it seemed undesirable to separate it from the other Abyssinian languages, or these from their neighbours to the north and south. Circassian and Ossetic are joined to the first group of Aryan languages lying to the north-west of Persia, and containing Armenian, Georgian and Kurd. The following is the order of the groups, some of the more important languages, that is, of those best provided with dictionaries, standing alone: —

Greek. — Athenaeus quotes 35 writers of works, known or supposed to be dictionaries, for, as they are all lost, it is often difficult to decide on their nature. Of these, Anticlides, who lived after the reign of Alexander the Great, wrote Έξηγητικός, which seems to have been a sort of dictionary, perhaps explaining the words and phrases occurring in ancient stories. Zenodotus, the first superintendent of the great library of Alexandria, who lived in the reigns of Ptolemy I. and Ptolemy II., wrote Γλῶσσαι, and also Λέξεις ἐθνικαἰ, a dictionary of barbarous or foreign phrases. Aristophanes of Byzantium, son of Apelles the painter, who lived in the reigns of Ptolemy II. and Ptolemy III., and had the supreme management of the Alexandrian library, wrote a number of works, as Άττικαί Λέξεις, Λακωνικαί Γλῶσσαι which, from the titles, should be dictionaries, but a fragment of his Λέξεις printed by Boissonade, in his edition of Herodian (London, 1869, 8vo, pp. 181-189), is not alphabetical. Artemidorus, a pupil of Aristophanes, wrote a dictionary of technical terms used in cookery. Nicander Colophonius, hereditary priest of Apollo Clarius, born at Claros, near Colophon in Ionia, in reputation for 50 years, from 181 to 135, wrote Γλῶσσαι in at least three books. Parthenius, a pupil of the Alexandrian grammarian Dionysius (who lived in the 1st century before Christ), wrote on choice words used by historians. Didymus, called χαλκένερος, who, according to Athenaeus, wrote 3500 books, and, according to Seneca, 4000, wrote lexicons of the tragic poets (of which book 28 is quoted), of the comic poets, of ambiguous words and of corrupt expressions. Glossaries of Attic words were written by Crates, Philemon, Philetas and Theodorus; of Cretan, by Hermon or Hermonax; of Phrygian, by Neoptolemus; of Rhodian, by Moschus; of Italian, by Diodorus of Tarsus; of foreign words, by Silenus; of synonyms, by Simaristus; of cookery, by Heracleon; and of drinking vessels, by Apollodorus of Cyrene. According to Suidas, the most ancient Greek lexicographer was Apollonius the sophist, son of Archibius. According to the common opinion, he lived in the time of Augustus at Alexandria. He composed a lexicon of words used by Homer, Λέξεις Όμηρικαί, a very valuable and useful work, though much interpolated, edited by Villoison, from a MS. of the 10th century, Paris, 1773, 4to, 2 vols.; and by Tollius, Leiden, 1788, 8vo; ed. Bekker, Berlin, 1833, 8vo. Erotian or Herodian, physician to Nero, wrote a lexicon on Hippocrates, arranged in alphabetical order, probably by some copyist, whom Klein calls “homo sciolus.” It was first published in Greek in H. Stephani Dictionarium Medicum, Paris, 1564, 8vo; ed. Klein, Lipsiae, 1865, 8vo, with additional fragments. Timaeus the sophist, who, according to Ruhnken, lived in the 3rd century, wrote a very short lexicon to Plato, which, though much interpolated, is of great value, 1st ed. Ruhnken, Leiden, 1754; ed. locupletior, Lugd. Bat. 1789, 8vo. Aelius Moeris, called the Atticist, lived about 190a.d., and wrote an Attic lexicon, 1st ed. Hudson, Oxf. 1712, Bekker, 1833. Julius Pollux (Ίούλιος Πολυδεύκης) of Naucratis, in Egypt, died, aged fifty-eight, in the reign of Commodus (180-192), who made him professor of rhetoric at Athens. He wrote, besides other lost works, an Onomasticon in ten books, being a classed vocabulary, intended to supply all the words required by each subject with the usage of the best authors. It is of the greatest value for the knowledge both of language and of antiquities. First printed by Aldus, Venice, 1500, fol.; often afterwards; ed. Lederlinus and Hemsterhuis, Amst. 1706, 2 vols.; Dindorf, 1824, 5 vols., Bethe (1900 f.). Harpocration of Alexandria, probably of the 2nd century, wrote a lexicon on the ten Attic orators, first printed by Aldus, Ven. 1503, fol.; ed. Dindorf, Oxford, 1853, 8vo, 2 vols. from 14 MSS. Orion, a grammarian of Thebes, in Egypt, who lived between 390 and 460, wrote an etymological dictionary, printed by Sturz, Leipzig, 1820, 4to. Helladius a priest of Jupiter at Alexandria, when the heathen temples there were destroyed by Theophilus in 389 or 391 escaped to Constantinople, where he was living in 408. He wrote an alphabetical lexicon, now lost, chiefly of prose, called by Photius the largest (πολυστιχώτατον) which he knew. Ammonius, professor of grammar at Alexandria, and priest of the Egyptian ape, fled to Constantinople with Helladius, and wrote a dictionary of words similar in sound but different in meaning, which has been often printed in Greek lexicons, as Aldus, 1497, Stephanus, and separately by Valckenaer, Lugd. Bat. 1739, 4to, 2 vols., and by others. Zenodotus wrote on the cries of animals, printed in Valckenaer’s Ammonius; with this may be compared the work of Vincentio Caralucci, Lexicon vocum quae a brutis animalibusemittuntur, Perusia, 1779, 12mo. Hesychius of Alexandria wrote a lexicon, important for the knowledge of the language and literature, containing many dialectic and local expressions and quotations from other authors, 1st ed. Aldus, Ven. 1514, fol.; the best is Alberti and Ruhnken, Lugd. Bat. 1746-1766, fol. 2 vols.; collated with the MS. in St Mark’s library, Venice, the only MS. existing, by Niels Iversen Schow, Leipzig, 1792, 8vo; ed. Schmidt, Jena, 1867, 8vo. The foundation of this lexicon is supposed to have been that of Pamphilus, an Alexandrian grammarian, quoted by Athenaeus, which, according to Suidas, was in 95 books from Ε to Ω; Α to Δ had been compiled by Zopirion. Photius, consecrated patriarch of Constantinople, 25th December 857, living in 886, left a lexicon, partly extant, and printed with Zonaras, Lips. 1808, 4to, 3 vols., being vol. iii.; ed. Naber, Leidae, 1864-1865, 8vo, 2 vols. The most celebrated of the Greek glossaries is that of Suidas, of whom nothing is known. He probably lived in the 10th century. His lexicon is an alphabetical dictionary of words including the names of persons and places — a compilation of extracts from Greek writers, grammarians, scholiasts and lexicographers, very carelessly and unequally executed. It was first printed by Demetrius Chalcondylas, Milan, 1499, fol.; the best edition, Bernhardy, Halle, 1853, 4to, 2 vols. John Zonaras, a celebrated Byzantine historian and theologian, who lived in the 12th century, compiled a lexicon, first printed by Tittmann, Lips. 1808. 4to, 2 vols. An anonymous Greek glossary, entitled Έτυμολογικὸν μέγα, Etymologicum magnum, has been frequently printed. The first edition is by Musurus, Venitia, 1499, fol.; the best by Gaisford, Oxonii, 1848, fol. It contains many grammatical remarks by famous authorities, many passages of authors, and mythological and historical notices. The MSS. vary so much that they look like the works of different authors. To Eudocia Augusta of Makrembolis, wife of the emperors Constantine XI. and Romanus IV. (1059 to 1071), was ascribed a dictionary of history and mythology, Ίωνιά (bed of violets), first printed by D’Ansse de Villoison, Anecdota Graeca, Venetiis, 1781, 4to, vol. i. pp. 1-442. It was supposed to have been of much value before it was published. Thomas, Magister Officiorum under Andronicus Palaeologus, afterward called as a monk Theodulus, wrote Έκλογαὶ ὀνομάτων Άττικῶν, printed by Callierges, Romae, 1517, 8vo: Papias, Vocabularium, Mediolani, 1476, fol.: Craston, an Italian Carmelite monk of Piacenza, compiled a Greek and Latin lexicon, edited by Bonus Accursius, printed at Milan, 1478, fol.: Aldus, Venetiis, 1497, fol.: Guarino, born about 1450 at Favora, near Camarino, who called himself both Phavorinus and Camers, published his Thesaurus in 1504. These three lexicons were frequently reprinted. Estienne, Thesaurus, Genevae, 1572, fol., 4 vols.; ed. Valpy, Lond. 1816-1826, 6 vols. fol.; Paris, 1831-1865, 9 vols. fol., 9902 pages: Κιβωτός, the ark, was intended to give the whole language, ancient and modern, but vol. i., Constantinople, 1819, fol., 763 pages, Α to Δ, only appeared, as the publication was put an end to by the events of 1821. English. — Jones, London, 1823, 8vo: Dunbar, Edin. 3rd ed. 1850, 4to: Liddell and Scott, 8th ed. Oxford, 1897, 4to. French. — Alexandre, 12th ed. Paris, 1863, 8vo; 1869-1871, 2 vols: Chassang, ib. 1872, 8vo. Italian. — Camini, Torino, 1865, 8vo, 972 pages: Müller, ib. 1871, 8vo. Spanish. — Diccionario manual, por lespadres Esculapios, Madrid, 1859, 8vo. German. — Passow, 5th ed. Leipzig, 1841-1857, 4to: Jacobitz and Seiler, 4th ed. ib. 1856, 8vo: Benseler, ib. 1859, 8vo: Pape, Braunschweig, 1870-1874, 8vo, 4 vols. Prellwitz, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der griechischen Sprache, new edition, 1906: Herwerden, Lexicon Graecum suppletorium et dialecticum, 1902. Dialects. — Attic: Moeris, ed. Pierson, Lugd. Bat. 1759. 8vo. Attic Orators: Reiske, Oxon. 1828, 8vo, 2 vols. Doric: Portus, Franckof. 1605, 8vo. Ionic: Id. ib. 1603, 8vo; 1817; 1825. Prosody. — Morell, Etonae, 1762, 4to; ed. Maltby, Lond. 1830, 4to: Brasse, Lond. 1850, 8vo. Rhetoric. — Ernesti, Lips. 1795, 8vo.Music. — Drieberg, Berlin, 1855. Etymology. — Curtius, Leipzig, 1858-1862: Lancelot, Paris, 1863, 8vo. Synonyms. — Peucer, Dresden, 1766, 8vo: Pillon, Paris, 1847, 8vo. Proper Names. — Pape, ed. Sengebusch, 1866, 8vo, 969 pages. Verbs. — Veitch, 2nd ed. Oxf. 1866. Terminations. — Hoogeveen, Cantab. 1810, 4to: Pape, Berlin, 1836, 8vo. Particular Authors. — Aeschylus: Wellauer, 2 vols. Lips. 1830-1831, 8vo. Aristophanes: Caravella, Oxonii, 1822, 8vo. Demosthenes: Reiske, Lips. 1775, 8vo. Euripides: Beck, Cantab. 1829, 8vo. Herodotus: Schweighäuser, Strassburg, 1824, 8vo, 2 vols. Hesiod: Osoruis, Neapol. 1791, 8vo. Homer: Apollonius Sophista, ed. Tollius, Lugd. Bat., 1788, 8vo: Schaufelberger, Zürich, 1761-1768, 8vo, 8 vols.: Crusius, Hanover, 1836, 8vo: Wittich, London, 1843, 8vo: Döderlein, Erlangen, 8vo, 3 vols.: Eberling, Lipsiae, 1875, 8vo: Autenrieth, Leipzig, 1873, 8vo; London, 1877, 8vo. Isocrates: Mitchell, Oxon. 1828, 8vo. Pindar: Portus, Hanov. 1606, 8vo. Plato: Timaeus, ed. Koch, Lips. 1828, 8vo: Mitchell, Oxon. 1832, 8vo: Ast, Lips. 1835-1838, 8vo, 3 vols. Plutarch: Wyttenbach, Lips. 1835, 8vo, 2 vols. Sophocles: Ellendt, Regiomonti, 1834-1835, 8vo ed.; Genthe, Berlin, 1872, 8vo. Thucydides: Bétant, Geneva, 1843-1847, 8vo, 2 vols. Xenophon: Sturtz, Lips. 1801-1804, 8vo, 4 vols.: Cannesin (Anabasis, Gr.-Finnish), Helsirgissä, 1868, 8vo: Sauppe, Lipsiae, 1869, 8vo. Septuagint: Hutter, Noribergae, 1598, 4to: Biel, Hagae, 1779-1780, 8vo. New Testament: Lithocomus, Colon, 1552, 8vo: Parkhurst, ed. Major, London, 1845, 8vo: Schleusner (juxta ed. Lips. quartam), Glasguae, 1824, 4to.

Syriac. — Joshua ben Ali, a physician, who lived about 885, made a Syro-Arabic lexicon, of which there is a MS. in the Vatican. Hoffmann printed this lexicon from Alif to Mim, from a Gotha MS., Kiel, 1874, 4to. Joshua bar Bahlul, living 963, wrote another, great part of which Castelli put into his lexicon. His MS. is now at Cambridge, and, with those at Florence and Oxford, was used by Bernstein. Elias bar Shinaya, born 975, metropolitan of Nisibis, 1009, wrote a Syriac and Arabic lexicon, entitled Kitāb ūt Tarjumanfi Taalem Loghat es Sūriān (Book called the Interpreter for teaching the Language of the Syrians), of which there is a MS. in the British Museum. It was translated into Latin by Thomas à Novaria, a Minorite friar, edited by Germanus, and published at Rome by Obicinus, 1636, 8vo. It is a classified vocabulary, divided in 30 chapters, each containing several sections. Crinesius, Wittebergae,1612, 4to: Buxforf, Basileae, 1622, 4to: Ferrarius, Romae, 1622, 4to: Trost, Cothenis Anhaltor, 1643, 4to: Gutbir, Hamburgi, 1667, 8vo: Schaaf, Lugd. Bat, 1708, 4to: Zanolini, Patavii, 1742, 4to: Castellus, ed. Michaelis, Göttingen, 1788, 4to, 2 vols.: Bernstein, Berlin, 1857, &c. fol.: Smith (Robt. Paine), Dean of Canterbury, Oxonii, 1868, &c. fol.: fasc. 1-3 contain 538 pages: Zingerle, Romae, 1873, 8vo, 148 pages.

↑Joannes de Garlandia (John Garland; fl. 1202-1252) gives the following explanation in his Dictionarius, which is a classed vocabulary: — “Dictionarius dicitur libellus iste a dictionibus magis necessariis, quas tenetur quilibet scolaris, non tantum in scrinio de lignis facto, sed in cordis armariolo firmiter retinere.” This has been supposed to be the first use of the word.

↑An excellent dictionary of quotations, perhaps the first of the kind; a large folio volume printed in Strassburg about 1475 is entitled “Pharetra auctoritates et dicta doctorum, philosophorum, et poetarum continens.”

↑This volume was issued with a new title-page as Glossaire dumoyen âge, Paris, 1872.